Editor 54

Field Trip (2)

As soon as the banquet ended, Cleio hurried back to his room.

Fran was already fast asleep under the covers.

Cleio, too, lay down on his bed early in the evening.

He felt at a loss as to how he could persuade Fran the next day to devise the Tiflaum activation formula and catalyst.

His mind spun with all the information he’d learned about mana stones and Tiflaum in class since coming here.

Mana stones and Tiflaum shared the trait of being able to retain ether even outside a circle.

‘Mana stones are so expensive that, rather than being used as materials for magic tools, they’re mostly bought by the powerful as status symbols.’

Mana stones looked as beautiful as precious gems. Usually, a single spell like [Cold Protection] was engraved on them and used as jewelry.

But only a mage could use a mana stone as a medium to implement a grand, complex spell, and in that case, the mana stone would disappear after the magic was cast.

On the other hand, products like the Tiflaum “suppression orb” would always function with the complex magic formula engraved at the time of manufacture, regardless of the user’s capabilities.

However, the power of magic that could be implemented was weak, and only high-level mages could process Tiflaum, which was a drawback.

Mana stones and Tiflaum were two materials that could complement each other’s weaknesses and roles.

If only the problem of processing Tiflaum could be properly solved!

‘But the guy who could solve it is like that.’

Turning from Fran to the ceiling and tossing and turning, Cleio lowered his reading light and took out several issues of he had brought from the capital.

He wanted to read the articles Fran had contributed.

After reading just a few submissions, it became clear.

Fran was certainly a genius, even in the .

‘It’s just that he’s a genius agitator instead of a genius scientist.’

Staring at Fran’s curled-up back, Cleio, too, soon drifted off to sleep.

.

.

.

A strange sense of unease settled into the chilly air.

Cold wind seeped in through the slightly open terrace door.

How many hours had he slept?

When Cleio opened his eyes, he realized what felt wrong.

The bed opposite was empty, leaving only the covers tossed aside.

“!!!”

Cleio snapped awake and swept a hand over Fran’s bed.

It was cold.

‘He’s been gone for quite a while.’

The Winter Palace was also protected by wards.

If Fran had managed it without a trace, it was unlikely to be an intrusion.

‘Did Fran leave of his own accord? At this hour?’

Fran’s coat and jacket still hung on the coat rack by the door.

Cleio ran past the open door and hurried out onto the balcony.

Spread before him was a black forest, where not even a night bird called.

With [Perception] layered over his vision, he scanned outside.

On the new moon night, [Perception] caught a part of the forest, utterly dark, trembling.

Activating his senses to the limit, the information streaming in became ominous.

Crunch, crackle.

The sound of two people treading on fallen leaves.

A sharp intake of breath.

And an abnormally strong smell of blood reached Cleio. He was about to shout to call for help, but thinking of Fran’s situation, he shut his mouth.

‘If any of those friends heading for jail show up and Melchior appears, things will get complicated.’

Gripping the railing tightly, Cleio leaned out to check above, below, and to the sides of the building. All the guest room lights were off, as it was late.

Below the third-floor terrace was a shallow layer of underbrush.

There was no more time to hesitate.

Opening a circle, Cleio jumped off the railing. He hadn’t prepared any fancy incantation.

‘I really need to make something up soon.’

“[Slow][Slow][Slow]!”

Instead, he filled all three magic slots with slow spells. It was a foolish waste of ether, but there was no other choice.

Rustle.

Even with reduced speed, Cleio’s poor athleticism made for a rough landing.

His pajamas tore and he got scratched from hitting the vines below the balcony, but he wasn’t hurt.

This was no time to dawdle.

With a maximum 20-meter diameter circle and [Leap][Float] magic deployed, Cleio hurled himself toward the source of the blood.

“[Leap, as with the messenger’s feet!]”

The forest was truly vast.

Due to the nature of the circle, each use of magic only moved him a circle’s diameter, which was frustrating.

He deployed a circle, leaped to its edge, then opened a new circle from there, and leaped again…

It was only after painstakingly connecting circles like beads for quite a while that he finally reached the source of the blood.

There stood a grand old beech tree.

It was the tallest tree in the forest.

The smell of blood began beneath the beech that had not yet shed its leaves.

His eyes, accustomed to the dark, quickly found the boy.

‘Fran!?’

Fran’s eyes were open as he lay collapsed between the tree roots.

The broken lens of his glasses was stained with blood.

His chest, where the heart should have been, was darkly caved in at the center of his ribs.

The boy’s clothes were soaked black with blood.

His right hand was severed at the wrist and gone.

It was a horrific scene.

“Francis!!!”

Cleio called out frantically. Kneeling beside the boy, blood soaking his pajamas from the ground, he trembled as he pressed Fran’s neck.

He froze in shock.

The pulse had completely stopped.

The body of the eighteen-year-old boy was growing cold.

“No… How could this…!”

Cleio instinctively activated his “unique skill.”

Golden letters of [Oath] cast a golden light over Cleio and the dead boy.

The blood-soaked leaves shone dully under the light.

[Unique Skill: ‘Editor Privileges’ in use. (1/3)]

[―Time left / Time limit:

00:00:59 / 00:00:60]

Cleio’s eyes widened as he checked the time limit.

The time limit for ‘Editor Privileges’ had increased to one minute!

Tattered wads of paper and a pen appeared in his hand.

The palimpsest seemed even more damaged; its edges crumbled at the touch.

Cleio flipped through the in reverse from where it was open.

He squeezed out every ounce of focus he had. He tried to understand the content even more desperately than when taking the college entrance exam language section.

—Fran’s body lies cooling in the blood.

This was the present moment.

—The two men who took Fran’s right hand disappear into the darkness.

—“Bigfoot Bill” cuts off the boy’s right wrist with a large butcher’s knife.

—“Swift Paul” holds Fran’s limbs. “Bigfoot Bill” stabs Fran.

—“People’s Flag Scholar District Branch Chief” Francis Gabriel Hyde-White arrives at the appointed place on time.

—Fran waits for his roommate Cleio to fall asleep.

‘I need to edit from here!’

[―Time left / Time limit:

00:00:06 / 00:00:60]

He’d found the section to edit, but there was still time left.

While he had the chance, he needed to grasp as much of the ’s content as possible.

‘Why did things go this crazy?!’

Leaving a finger in the page to be edited, Cleio kept speed-reading backward through the pages.

He’d never been so grateful for his ability to speed-read.

—“Swift Paul” bribes a palace servant to slip a note into Fran’s pocket. It says comrades are in danger and asks him to come to the meeting place.

—“Swift Paul” hesitates to kill the child. “Bigfoot Bill” argues that “Francis is a young master from a noble family, just like Robert, and will betray us someday.”

—The Winter Palace, with weaker security than the capital, is the best place to lure Fran and approach Melchior.

—“Bigfoot Bill’s” plan is to take the right hand of the “People’s Flag Scholar District Branch Chief” to Melchior and ask for a full pardon.

—There is “some kind of stigmata” on Fran’s right hand.

—Melchior has a huge interest in Fran, the “People’s Flag Scholar District Branch Chief,” especially in his stigmata.

—The last comrade contacted pleads for information about “Fran White.” He believes turning Fran in will earn him a pardon.

—All other comrades are dead or missing.

—The “People’s Flag” radicals’ plan to assassinate Melchior failed. Now only “Bigfoot Bill” and “Swift Paul” remain alive among the radicals.

‘So that’s what happened?!’

[―Time left / Time limit:

00:00:05 / 00:00:60]

Only five seconds left now.

He had to start editing.

His hand gripping the pen was slick with sweat.

To keep from dropping the pen, Cleio gripped it tightly and scrawled deletion marks below the paragraph where Fran checks that Cleio is asleep.

Even in the dark, the gold dust mixed into the indigo ink gleamed like starlight, making the symbols stand out clearly on the page.

A few seconds of waiting felt like a thousand years.

‘Author, please, just this once!’

At last, a message appeared!

[―The author accepts the editor’s suggestion.]

[―The scene in question will be edited.]

On the open spread, the eight paragraphs on the right page faded away as if washed by water.

The shattered lens of the glasses reverted to its intact form.

The lonely shadows of night and blood-soaked leaves scattered before Cleio’s knees.

Forest, darkness, and night all rewound at once, returning the world to its previous state.

The world, losing texture and depth, became a flat ink line and then faded white.

A terrible sense of alienation that never became familiar, no matter how many times he experienced it.

A blankness as if all sensation had been taken away.

.

.

.

Cleio opened his eyes on his own bed in the guestroom annex of the Winter Palace.

Fran, who was peering at him, gasped in surprise.

‘It worked!’

Cleio shot up and grabbed Fran’s wrist.

Urgent words burst out.

“Don’t go, Francis. You’ll die if you go!”

“What—!”

Fran tried to shake his arm free.

Under Cleio’s palm, Fran’s pulse throbbed wildly.

This really was the world from eight paragraphs ago.

A world where Fran was still alive.

This time, he’d made the right choice.

That terrifying power of revision had, just this once, sided with Cleio.

‘As I thought, Fran was never meant to die! The minor characters acted out of line!’

The Tiflaum problem still hadn’t been solved. If Fran left the stage, the author would be in trouble, too.

“Someone must have asked you for help, right? But those people don’t really need help. They meant to kill you and take your wrist to Melchior.”

“How do you know that!”

“Fran, ‘I speak with sincerity.’ I have a stigmata. Look.”

A rectangular indigo line appeared on the back of Cleio’s hand, since he had just used “Editor Privileges.”

Fran’s eyes fell to the stigmata, just as Cleio continued.

“This is a stigmata with the unique skill of ‘Prediction.’ I see the future.”

The only “sincerity” he’d spoken was about the stigmata. The rest was a complete lie.

But not knowing the truth, Fran’s pupils began to tremble with agitation.

Releasing Fran, who had stopped struggling, Cleio held out his hand so the stigmata was visible and continued persuading him.

“My ‘Prediction’ is imperfect. Until it’s right in front of me, I can’t even tell what it’s about. What I’ve seen so far is blood soaking the fallen leaves, the corpse of a boy with a severed wrist under a beech tree.”

It was the scene he’d just witnessed. The description was vivid, as it had to be.

Fran’s face paled as he listened to his classmate describe his own gruesome death.

“A big, heavy-set man brings an axe down on the boy’s chest. At the same time, a thin, scarred man is holding him. Until now, I didn’t know where it was. But after coming to the ‘King’s Forest,’ I realized. The tallest beech tree, the one whose leaves don’t fall even in autumn.”

The tallest beech tree was the meeting place written on the note. As Cleio described the appearances of “Bigfoot Bill” and “Swift Paul,” Fran’s agitation deepened.

“They don’t trust you. Just like ‘Robert,’ who was from a noble family, they think you’ll betray the organization. For some reason, those men are being hunted by Melchior. So they want to offer your wrist in exchange for their own pardon.”

“How do you know… Robert…!”

Fran’s answer was almost a scream.

Cleio quickly activated a magic barrier and sat Fran on the bed.

“I don’t know who Robert is. I don’t know who those two men are, either. You don’t have to tell me. Just make sure you judge correctly whether they’re really on your side.”

It was as if Fran’s frantic thoughts were audible.

How much time passed?

At last, calm and resolve returned to Fran’s face, which had been on the verge of tears.

“…Robert was the mentor who handed me the ‘flag.’ He was a moderate who opposed terrorist activity, but was eventually branded a traitor. It was a conspiracy. I never believed Robert abandoned his convictions.”

Fran’s voice no longer shook, his words were clear and definite.

“But just because the people who cast out Robert aren’t my allies anymore doesn’t mean they’re not still my comrades. I have to go.”

It seemed impossible to stop Fran.

“Then I’ll go with you. I can’t let you go alone after saving your life!”